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for a few days. I pointed out another sale couch, but she said, “I’ve got to think about it. This is the first store I’ve been to; I want to look in a couple other places.”
    I rolled my eyes but said nothing, used to my sister’s habits. I was impulsive and made decisions about sofas or clothes or holidays on a whim, on intuition. Dani pondered things, researched products in Consumer Reports , and spent forty dollars in gas trekking around to eighteen stores in order to save ten bucks on something.
    “Fine,” I said. “Let me know when you want to go looking again. I’m getting ideas for when I can afford to replace Aunt Laurinda’s midcentury atrocities.”
    “You know,” Danielle said as we threaded our way back through the displays to the door, “her furniture might be worth money, like to a collector or something.”
    “I don’t think they’re legitimate antiques. They’re just old.”
    “Retro,” Danielle corrected me. “Collectible. Maybe you could make enough off of them to buy new furniture.”
    “It’s worth a thought.” We pushed through the glass door to the parking lot. “How would I find someone who would know if it’s worth something? I don’t think that Cari Something from the Cash and Cari show is likely to drop by, or the crew from Antiques Roadshow .”
    Dani tossed her hair and sniffed, knowing I was making fun of her love of do-it-yourself and home-makeover TV shows. “Laugh if you want, but I’ve learned a lot from those shows. I’ll find someone to give you an estimate.”
    “Really?” I hugged her good-bye. “Thanks, Dani.” She headed toward her car and I called after her, “Think about it.” I wasn’t talking about the sofa.

Chapter 5
    Between collecting Maurice from the police station, our field trip to Corinne Blakely’s house, and the furniture-shopping expedition with Dani, I’d taken an extraordinarily long lunch. No biggie, I told myself, climbing the interior stairs to the studio at almost two o’clock. Our next class wasn’t until four, and I’d be working until eight o’clock tonight with classes and a private lesson with one of the men who paid me to dance with him at professional-amateur competitions. Such students were a pro’s bread and butter, and I was hoping to take on a couple more, since one of my best students, Mark Downey, had turned out to be an unbalanced stalker type.
    When I opened the door into the studio hallway, the strains of “With You I’m Born Again,” one of my favorite waltzes, drifted from the ballroom. Curious about who was here—I’d installed new locks not long ago and only a few people had keys—I paused outside the ballroom door. Vitaly Voloshin, my new dance partner, stood at the bar stretching. He had a lanky body and was one of those people who look totally unprepossessing at first glance; in fact, you wouldn’t be surprised to hear he was a 7-Eleven clerk or video store manager, with his longish, strawlike hair, pale skin, and bony face. But when he stepped on a dance floor, he underwent an amazing transformation, becoming somehow elegant and electric. I couldn’t explain it. He caught sight of me in the mirrors I’d had installed when we redid the room after the fire, and his face split into a grin. He loved smiling since his partner, John, had gifted him with dental work that turned his formerly tannish, crooked teeth into movie star–worthy choppers.
    “Good. You is here. We can practicing. I have the new ideas for our waltz.”
    “We didn’t have a practice scheduled.”
    Vitaly raised his brows. “So?”
    “You’re right. Give me a minute.” I clattered back downstairs and threw on dance leggings, a T-shirt, and my dance shoes. He was waiting in the middle of the ballroom’s hardwood floor when I returned, hand extended in invitation. He cued the stereo with the remote as I walked toward him, feeling myself drift into the dreamy, elegant mood of the waltz as the first notes floated around